Farewell to Reason

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edited and with an introduction by Isaac Kramnick

The Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an exultant intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire capitalism. This volume brings together the era's classic works, with more than a hundred selections from a broad range of sources—including works by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine—that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions. Included are seminal discourses on science and religion, on the social contract, on the equality (and inequality)...

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Mónica Judith Sánchez Flores

"In a time of globalization, Political Philosophy for the Global Age provides a theoretical basis for the convergence of human values in terms of legitimate conceptions of time, language, and notions of self. Sanchez Flores reviews what she considers to be the most important positions in the current debate on political theory (liberalism, communitarianism, feminism, and postcolonialism) and also proposes her own original contribution. Sanchez Flores's unique approach is a critique of a type of morality formulated solely on the basis of the Judeo-Christian view of reality. It is a theoretical construct that becomes an invitation to explore other notions of human morality and an inquiry into the need to produce a political philosophy that universalizes an ethics of caring and responsibility as well as provides a locus where diverse human cultures can meet."--Jacket.

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Pierre Duhem

Here, for the first time in English, are the philosophical essays - including the first statement of the "Duhem Thesis" - that formed the basis for Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, together with new translations of the historiographical essays presenting the equally celebrated "Continuity Thesis" by Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), a founding figure of the history and philosophy of science. Prefaced by an introduction on Duhem's intellectual development and continuing significance, here as well are important subsequent essays in which Duhem elaborated key concepts and critiqued such contemporaries as Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach. Together, these works offer a lively picture of the state of science at the turn of the century while addressing methodological issues that remain at the center of debate today.

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Chana B. Cox

"Liberty: God's Gift to Humanity is a defense of liberalism, the political philosophy which holds that governments should be established for the protection of individual liberty. Since the seventeenth century the bond between liberalism and religion has been strong. Where and when that bond has been severed, liberalism has withered and religion has become tyrannical. Although libertarians, free market economists, and the Christian right often disagree about the nature of man and the nature of the universe, this work provides a philosophically and historically coherent account of their shared commitment to limited government and individual liberty."--Jacket.